No hablo castellano (I don't speak Spanish!)

I think Ed has already mentioned this but we are totally out of our comfort zone at the moment. We don't speak Spanish at all, bar the easy words like "hello", "thankyou" and "goodbye" and so a day like today when we have cycled into Pamplona has had some challenges! First of all reading the signs and finding the way, then looking for the tourist information office. When we eventually found it, we needed to ask about 'La Vuelta', the cycle race that starts in the centre tomorrow. Surprisingly neither of the men in the tourist office knew very much about it, and we only saw one poster advertising the event. It's made us wonder if it's actually happening, but we're going back tomorrow anyway to find out!!!

We wandered around looking at some of the sights of Pamplona, again all information boards in Spanish, and the sights mostly historical. And then we braved a cafe/bar/restaurant (in England it would be called a pub!!!) to have lunch. At this point I must confess that we chose one where they apparently spoke English, but the waiter's English was as good as our Spanish!!! He did try, and so did we! What read as a nice salad turned out for me to be a mountain of lettuce leaves, 4 slices of large tomatoes, at least 2 grated carrots and a handful of grated cheese arranged somewhat symmetrically on a plate. Not the most attractive looking plate, but it was OK and did the job!

We then decided that we needed to buy a decent road map of Spain as we hope to avoid another situation like yesterday when we discovered the inefficiency of the road signs!!! Now, if you think you need a map, you would go to WHSmiths, or Waterstones, or even the local supermarket. Nothing like this was in existence on any of the streets we wondered down, and we wondered down a few! We did see Zara, Tommy Hillfiger, Superdry to name a few, but the highlight for me was Clarks shoes!!! Seriously! So we don't have a map. But we did find a lovely shop selling bull run related apparel and so Jasper and Maya were treated to a new key ring each for their collections, and a 60 cents cardboard mask of a bull each, which proved a great success!

All in all another good day out. I just wish that I'd used the advice of our neighbour Mick. I'm fairly sure it was he who told us to say, "me no speaka de lingo" as he passed on to us a nearly new Spanish phrase book!!! 

Clare

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